lol, that sounds interesting - I want to try to create something like that......

Hmmm, maybe the problem in your code was that the Wizard didn''t "know" that casting the custom Fireball doo-hicky would kill him and do severe damage to his house. Perhaps if you added an algorithm that attempts to make the entity "realize"/calculate the consequences of their actions, this problem won''t happen again. It''s almost like making a conscience for the entity I guess. though, I don''t think that''s the right word.

Division-By-Zero, you''re right.I should try that.When the database and code are fixed I think I''ll put the thing (maybe the source code too)up for download.But that might take a while.

This Day All Gods Die

Consider writing an article on the topic too. I''m sure there would be a lot of people interested.

"Paranoia is the belief in a hidden order behind the visible." - Anonymous

quote: Original post by Division-By-Zero
Hmmm, maybe the problem in your code was that the Wizard didn''t "know" that casting the custom Fireball doo-hicky would kill him and do severe damage to his house.

Well, this could conceivable happen to an experimenting wizard... Magic is dangerous stuff, and anything that reminds the player of this is a good thing, I think. I''m reminded
or a gamasutra article, "Putting the magic back in magic" i think it was called.

PS - The system you''ve created sounds really interesting. Some executables would be just dandy to play with...

Wouldn''t that just suck, if every self-emergent AI-world humankind invented would just eventually selfterminate, "commit suicide". Scary thought. Especially when you think of humankind itself...

Somebody should write a sci-fi book about this.

I''ve had a similar experience a few years ago; i was writing a 2d-tiled RPG. One day, i decided to test my quite advanced AI in a little test dungeon. So, i created a warrior character and entered in a little test room.
In this room i had built a trap. When someone hit it, it made an ugly mummy appear in the room. Must i say that the mummy wasn''t a friend ?
Anyway, i wanted to test this trap and how the mummy was going to behave. I hit the trap. The mummy appeared. At this time, all looked fine.
Then, the first thing the mummy did was to..run into the trap.
A second mummy appeared.
It did the same thing.
Etc..
After 10 seconds, there was 15 mummies trying to catch me.

You really couldn''t imagine the expression on my face when it happened.

Y.

What happened in your AI seems to be very interesting since
it looks quite like some kind of evolutional process. Even
if you killed your database that way, you could compare that
process to a "natural" unsuccessfull attempt of creating a
species. If your AI would be able to "learn" from this
accident, that would be a good step in the right direction.
The general question to me is more if we should use this
approach in games where players more often expect a more deterministic behaviour ?
Peter Molyneux''s Black and White will tell us if it''s
suitable.
By the way, i would not use this if / else approach. Instead
i would prefer a scriptable rule engine and a state machine
for a characters in a game.

cu

Peter

Hey Peter, I was born in Hessen (and yes, I do speak German).

Phemmer, you''re right, but I''ve never done something like that before.Note that I''m doing all this in Visual Basic, which makes it kinda difficult.But it does work (kind of..)

This Day All Gods Die

Phemmer, what is a state machine if not a series of if/else clauses?

Mike